Should these 4 19th Century players be in the HOF?

[Rad_Hazard]

Originally Posted by Schwertfeger1007

Absolutely Jack Glasscock

McCormick I'm on the fence

I love Mullane but he never led the league in Wins or ERA but does hold the record for most wild pitches in MLB history by a wide margin, so no...but how cool is this card???

Mathews no

I think Glasscock and McCormick are absolute locks for the hall. McCormick has better pitching stats than a lot of HOF pitchers, and has the strongest case of any of the 4 IMO.

Mullane is a bit tougher, he's more of an accumulated stats (primarily Wins) kind of guy. (BTW that card is beautiful!)

As for Mathews, he has solid career numbers, and his historical/pioneer contributions are many. He's an easy HOFer IMO.

Originally Posted by Fred

If Bobby Mathews had 3 more W's, he'd already be in. 297 Wins (.545), sheesh. Mathews played in a few different leagues - was a true pioneer of the game. He had 2 x 30 and 2 x 20 loss seasons.

Mullane is at 284 lifetime wins (.563). Missed 1885 (I think because of contract jumping). He had 3 x 30+ wins a season prior to 1885 and 2 x 30+ wins in the next two seasons. I'm going to guess he'd probably had won at least 15 games in 1885 and that would have put him at the magic 300 wins and enshrinement. Ok, most of the games were AA but still, that's a load of Ws. He had 5 x 20 loss seasons.

McCormick - at 265 wins (.553) had a 40 loss season along with a couple 30 loss seasons (not to mention the 4 x 20 loss seasons). But he was pretty much an NL player.

Bottom line, those guys threw a ton of innings in a season back then so those 20, 30 and 40 loss seasons aren't too bad, but 40 losses is still a lot (McCormick did win 20 games in that 40 loss season).

So many 19th century players that probably should be enshrined. The HOF should look towards a pioneer section. How the hell is Ross Barnes not in?

I couldn't agree more! Ross Barnes is the batting equivalent to Bobby Mathews. Both played during the same early days of baseball and Barnes absolutely dominated every aspect of the game (offense and defense) from 1871-1876, it's pretty astonishing.

Based on their solid stats and historical contributions, Barnes and Mathews are in the same conversation IMO, and should be in the hall in one way, shape, or form.